Dog Maths

Having made a rough mock up of the dog’s body for my Guard Dog project it is now time to transfer it to the computer.
I start by measuring up and writing the various dimensions in-situ. After which I cut up the model, lay it flat and pop the pieces in the scanner.

The body is basically a cone. With that in mind I contructed a couple of concentric circles and marked out a wedge.

Cut out and glued together it makes an upright cone section. (A frustum as I’m sure you remember from previous posts.) Check back with the picture at the top though and it becomes apparent that a frustum is not what I’m aiming at. The body actually leans forward with the front of the bodyalmost vertical.

In previous models I’ve added a slope to a cylinder by adding a sine wave shaped cut to construct a donut. I thought I’d give that a go here. I created a sine wave of the right width and height then used the envelope distort tool in Illustrator to bend it to fit at the body piece, one distorted sine wave at the bottom, one at the top.

Look at that, it works perfectly. Once again mathematics proves its awesomeness! Now that I have the body part designed I can get on with the rest of the model. I wonder if there is an equation to describe the perfect dog tail?